throwaway21_

Maybe you should follow your own advice - your numbers are wildly inflated (can easily be checked at Wikipedia), Ukrainians weren't the only ones in USSR who were starving to death and they were part of USSR leadership as any other nation there (with Stalin being Georgian). And frankly, idea that you're going to judge who is fit to comment is highly delusional.

So something like Assange.

Everybody is doing that. Even here on the HN you'll get shadow banned - couple of weeks ago whole thread that someone else started just disappeared. I become aware of that only when searching for my own message from that thread. It was semi-controversial issue but nothing in that thread (at least at the time I saw its content for the last time) warranted that. Basically what I'm seeing as a HN is just a view that someone else curates.

Impressive level of paranoia from a citizen of a country with 800 bases around the world. Mad propz for your mass media.

You mean you want US to be even more jingoistic? It won't be an easy task for sure as I'm reading propaganda pieces almost every day for a last few years in a places that earlier were almost politics free (ars technica, hn...) - regular new sites not to mention.

Why would he do any time at all? Because the people who actually should be doing time are the people in power so they are somehow immune?

Also, Chelsea could transition to a woman without prison too. The fact that they ended/will end in prison while people who actually committed crimes that these two (and Snowden) exposed speaks volumes about how fundamentally different USA is.

Nobody cares what Canada fears or not.

Simple fact is that there's no Chinese hegemony now and there won't be one in foreseeable future because there's existing hegemon that won't just give up.

btw one man's whataboutism is another man's uncovering of hypocrisy.

Sure, I clearly remember how Bush Jr. along Cheney, Powel and Rumsfeld went to court and were imprisoned for life for all the misery they inflicted. Oh, wait...

Yeah, EU investing money - good, China investing money - bad.

- Why it's bad?

- Because they get influence over government.

- But EU also gets even more influence when they invest money and finance myriads of NGOs?

- Yeah, but that's different - we are the good guys and they are bad (even when we're doing same thing).

Passengers were in danger in a same way passengers are in danger over New York if pilot refuses ATC directions.

Yeah, Morales's pilot could choose a different path provided there's air refueling available. Otherwise it had to land somewhere, and then airplane was searched. I'm pretty sure there are conventions that forbid that kind behavior against diplomatic personal.

So, in the end, we are again at the same place - when we ignore conventions that's perfectly fine, and when they do the same it's a completely different.

btw read first article of Chicago convention, then check what sovereignty means.

US allies kept CIA black sites on their territory without raising a voice (I guess they were very happy to prove their usefulness to the big boss), I certainly doubt they would protest for landing a plane for a few hours.

A said 'right' in the sense that they are free to do it like any other state - Lukashenko isn't nice guy at all but he didn't do anything unusual here - shooting that plane down would be extraordinary, but forcing it to land isn't significantly different than crap that was brought down on Assange or Snowden.